Summary: Model Optimization and Parameter Estimation
with Nimrod/O
David Abramson1
, Tom Peachey1
, and Andrew Lewis2
1
Caulfield School of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne,
Australia
2
Division of Information Services, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Abstract. Optimization problems where the evaluation step is com-
putationally intensive are becoming increasingly common in both en-
gineering design and model parameter estimation. We describe a tool,
Nimrod/O, that expedites the solution of such problems by performing
evaluations concurrently, utilizing a range of platforms from worksta-
tions to widely distributed parallel machines. Nimrod/O offers a range
of optimization algorithms adapted to take advantage of parallel batches
of evaluations. We describe a selection of case studies where Nimrod/O
has been successfully applied, showing the parallelism achieved by this
approach.